Category: Environment

The United States along with 19 other countries pledged to work speedily towards clean energy technologies through “Mission Innovation” that the joint effort has been named. The 20 governments realize that the pace of innovation is lacking and there needs to be a significant transformation in the scale. The announcement was made at the beginning of the 12-day climate change discussions in Paris that was attended by representatives from almost 200 countries. Mission Innovation intends to increase the annual funding on energy research from $10 billion to $20 billion collectively.

28 private investors including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and of course Microsoft’s Bill Gates have promised to support private businesses based on public research. Questions have been raised as to how well the public and private collaboration will work because it remains to argue that the government funding in the energy sector is less than satisfactory. Finding reliable and sturdy replacements for the current energy sources seems a distant dream for now although there is a considerable load of efforts being made in that direction.

The Breakthrough Energy Coalition that was created by the investors of Mission Innovation are trying to lay to rest the concerns on investment and are focusing on an aggressive global program towards zero emission energy innovations.

Would you buy from a store that sells food close to expiry date? Well, WeFood a grocery store in Denmark has just accomplished that. It is not like the social supermarkets that serve exclusively low-income people. WeFood is open to all understanding the fact that nobody likes to be known as poor. This initiative has seen great success and their inventory is emptied out on a daily basis. There are times that they have had to make emergency deliveries. They are not the first in Europe to sell surplus food and their services are intended to the betterment of the general public.

This initiative has helped reduce food wastage in Denmark by 25% over the past five years. It is open to all and operated by volunteers. WeFood like Daily Table is a non-profit establishment. As WeFood is operated by volunteers it does not need to cover operational costs and any profit made is used to support anti-poverty initiatives in other parts of the world. While the French Government has imposed laws against food wastage implementing fines and making it mandatory to give away food in charity, Denmark has taken a more effective carrot-based approach. WeFood has been open long enough and it is expected to grow into a chain in the near future.